Patients Can Sell and Aggregate TheirHealth Data

A mobile health startup has launched
a new platform that allows patients to
aggregate all of their electronic health
records (EHRs) themselves and take
advantage of blockchain technology to
share—and even sell—their health data
to whomever they want.

The platform, called Health Wizz, lets
users download their health records
from their various patient portals and
use the DirectTrust framework to share
them with other providers.

Sirish Bajpai, chief technology officer
of Health Wizz, explained that blockchain technology—which is a method
of distributing data across a number of
locations—“eliminates the middle man”
between a patient and their own records.

“Health Wizz doesn’t store healthrecords on the blockchain. It stores asignature of the record on a blockchainand provides secure access to thepatient, who is ultimately in control ofwhen, where, how and who can accessthat record. This digital signature alsoassures [sic] the integrity of the record,”Bajpai said in a company press release.

Health Wizz users interested in monetizing their data for drug companies
and researchers can do so through
the use of a digital currency created by
Health Wizz, called OmCoin, which operates similarly to Bitcoin.

“Because Health Wizz doesn’t currently parse the data patients pull from
patient portals, the data sharing it enables isn’t true, by-the-book interoperability of the variety called for by the
21st Century Cures Act,” stated a
Modern Healthcare article about the technology. “The company hopes to develop the ability to format records stored
as PDFs so they can be accessed using the FHIR standard (Health Wizz is a
founding member of HL7) and application programming interfaces.” ¢

Advisory Group Recommends Ending MIPS

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is calling for a repeal
of the Merit-based Incentive Payment
System (MIPS) payment tracking in a
proposed recommendation. Instead of
MIPS, the group recommends a Voluntary Value Program (VVP), in which
clinicians “could elect to be measured
as part of a voluntary group to qualify
for a value payment scored on their
group’s performance on a set of pop-ulation-based measures,” according
to Healthcare IT News. The measures
would be based on claims data—not
the criteria currently required under the
“meaningful use” Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program.

Under the proposed VVP model, aportion of clinicians’ fee schedule dol-lars would be withheld and lumped intoa pool. Clinicians could then choose tobe measured with a “sufficiently largeentity” of clinicians and be eligible forvalue payments, choose to participatein an advanced alternative paymentmodel, or choose to simply lose thewithheld amount, according to Med-Page Today.

The push from MedPAC to repeal
MIPS has been in the works for some
time, and not all industry stakeholders agree. In December the American
Hospital Association asked MedPAC to
“use data and experience from the field
before advocating for major changes
to the MIPS,” according to Healthcare
IT News. Arguments in favor of a MIPS
repeal include insufficient preparedness for the change among providers,
the level of complexity in the law, and a
high reporting burden.

As of press time, MedPAC planned
to present their plan to Congress in
March. ¢

A study published in the Journal of the
American Medical Informatics Association showed that patients’ reaction to
information shared in patient portals
was influenced by whether or not contextual information was also presented. “Study findings suggest that online
portals are not currently designed to
present test results to patients in a
meaningful way. Patients experienced
negative emotions often with abnormal results, but sometimes even with
normal results,” the report stated.

ONC’S PATIENT DEMOGRAPHIC DATA QUALITY
FRAMEWORK CITES IGAM AS RESOURCE
www.healthit.gov/playbook/pddq-framework/
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has released
the Patient Demographic Data Quality
Framework, designed to help organizations ensure their data management
standards and processes are effective and sustainable by minimizing the
number of duplicate records. AHIMA’s
Information Governance Adoption
Model™ (IGAM) was cited in the framework as a resource that provides useful
implementation guidance for data governance in the areas of data modeling,
data mapping, data audit, data quality
controls, data quality management,
data architecture, and data dictionaries.

NEW EDITION OF BASIC ICD-10-CM/PCS
CODING BOOK RELEASED
https://my.ahima.org/store/
product?id=64622

The new edition of Basic ICD-10-CM
and ICD-10-PCS Coding Exercises
was created to give beginning coding
professionals practical, skill-building
experience. Designed with industry
expert input, the book can be used as
a companion to Basic ICD-10-CM and
ICD-10-PCS Coding or as a stand-alone workbook for students new to
coding practice. The book presents
more than 400 patient care encounter
scenarios. ¢